The Global Brain can be defined as the distributed intelligence emerging from all human and technological agents as interacting via the Internet. It plays the role of a nervous system for the social superorganism.
The Global Brain can be defined as the self-organizing, adaptive network formed by all people on this planet together with the information and communication technologies that connect them into a cohesive system. The idea is that global interactions have made the people on this planet interdependent to such a degree that together they form a single superorganism, i.e. an organism (global society) whose components are organisms themselves (individual people). As the Internet becomes faster, smarter, and more encompassing, it increasingly interconnects people and computers into a single information-processing network, which plays the role of a nervous system for this superorganism.
The network of social, communication, and economic links make individuals, organizations, machines, and even ecosystems across the world ever more dependent on each other, and ever less capable of acting purely on their own without considering potentially faraway consequences.
The intelligence of such a Global Brain is collective or distributed: it is not localized in any particular individual, organization, or computer system. It rather emerges from the interactions between all these components.
Humanity is at present undergoing a metasystem transition to a level of collective intelligence that we as yet cannot imagine.
Most people tend to think of the mind as some human-like agent located inside the brain that monitors and controls the body. This naïve view is known as the homunculus fallacy. In reality, there is no central controller in the brain: the brain is merely a self-organizing network of communicating neurons where decision making is fully distributed, with myriads of processes going in parallel, sometimes supporting each other, sometimes competing to become the (temporary) focus of attention, but constantly adapting, exploring, and changing direction.
Because of the explosive advances in technology, the Global Brain seems to be developing superhuman capabilities similar to the classic attributes of God: omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. Indeed, the Internet becomes ever more ubiquitous, all-knowing, and powerful in the way it affects our activities. The fact that we tend to write the name in capital letters moreover may suggest the image of a new technological God being constructed.
The Global Brain should not be thought of as a static agent, or even as an institution, but as a type of process: a process that explores creative possibilities, connects unconnected dots, and (re)cognizes and exploits potential synergies by bringing into contact the most diverse ideas, people, and resources.
There is no strict separation between body, mind, and world, and therefore no homunculus acting as a central controller. There is merely an endless, encompassing stream of interactions being intelligently coordinated via distributed self-organization.